and I will hold on to you
by bowtruckles
Summary: "He has watched his family crumble the way Hogwarts had just days ago, and he has tried, with all the strength he's ever had, to hold them together." Ron and Hermione find a way to move forward, together, after the final battle.


_A/N: I wasn't intending on writing anything for the Battle of Hogwarts anniversary this year. But then I started feeling very... idk, melancholy and downtrodden today and I started writing on my lunch break and this is what happened. So since it's still May 2 in my slice of the globe, I decided to post it._

_(Title from "New Year's Day" by Taylor Swift, which I am newly obsessed with, and the vibe of which I hope is captured in this fic.)_

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He's just so tired. Everyone's coping with it differently - over the past five days, and as many funerals, he's seen everything from wracking sobs to stoic silences to bouts of rage to drinking in excess - and for him, his grief and doubt and aimlessness have somehow drained the life from his bones until the smallest things have required herculean efforts from him.

Each day since they returned to the Burrow has been the same. Ron drags himself from the confines of his childhood bed and trudges down several flights of stairs to fix breakfast. Using magic requires an energy and a concentration that he can't muster, so he cracks eggs and whisks them by hand, lays rashers in a pan and watches through bleary eyes as they sizzle in their own fat. His food is passable - at the very least, no one's been sick since he's taken over cooking for the family, so he counts that as a win. When everyone else is done, he sits at the battered wooden table and eats, mechanically, hardly tasting it. For all that he spent six months in a tent eating rubbery mushrooms and praying for a home-cooked meal, this isn't how he wanted it to happen.

The days are filled with funerals. He has watched as Remus, Tonks, Colin Creevey, and Lavender Brown were laid to rest. And he has watched, with a weight so heavy on his shoulders that he half-expected to sink into the rain-damp earth, as Fred's body was buried at the edge of the apple orchard bordering the Burrow, as quiet tears streamed down his father's cheeks, as Harry trembled beside him. He has watched his family crumble the way Hogwarts had just days ago, and he has tried, with all the strength he's ever had, to hold them together.

And the exhaustion never stops.

A week after the battle, he tries to shake it off by pretending it's not even there. He grabs his broom from the shed (the Death Eaters that ransacked the place over the Easter hols were been kind enough to leave the Weasley family's stock of brooms intact) and starts walking out to the orchard, to the opposite end from Fred's grave.

He only gets as far as the garden, however, when he catches sight of a lone figure perched atop the low stone wall that borders it. A lone figure, he notes as his stomach flips, with a small frame and bushy brown hair and an orange cat gamboling about in the grass below her feet.

It's not that he's avoiding her; he's actually spent more time with her than anyone else since they all got back. She held his hand tight all through Fred's funeral and cried into his shoulder at Lupin's, and they've done the washing up together every night, shoulder-to-shoulder. But every time they're alone together, he's flooded with a low-grade panic from the stark realization that he has no idea what to do. He's never been here before, teetering on the precipice of something with someone who means so much, and he's worried himself into a sort of paralysis.

But she must have heard his shoes on the grass, because she looks over her shoulder and locks eyes with him, and then he's walking toward her, irresistibly drawn toward her.

He seats himself on the wall next to her and lets his broom drop onto the grass. She looks at him, and then back out to the field where Crookshanks is chasing after a gnome.

"How long have you been out here?" he asks.

Now he thinks about it, he doesn't recall seeing her after dinner, but he had discovered a massive pile of laundry on the scullery floor when he'd gone to put away the salt shakers, and had settled down to folding.

"For a bit." Her eyes cast up to the sky, which is streaked in purple and pink and gold. "I just thought… I don't know. It's nothing."

For as long as he's known her, she's always said what's on her mind. "No, what is it?"

"I said it's nothing-"

"It's not nothing to me-"

"I just thought that you'd want to be alone."

Something in her voice makes him turn, and his heart sinks when he sees the look on her face. Whatever he had expected to see, the hurt and confusion in her eyes isn't it.

"What - no - why would I-"

"It's okay," she adds, voice brittle. "I - I'll understand, you know, if you don't - if you aren't-" She gives a shuddering breath. "It's okay if I was wrong, is what I'm saying."

Something thuds into place inside his weary brain, and the past week flashes through his mind with startling clarity. He's been trying not to ruin it, and he's done exactly that in the process.

"Hermione, I'm sorry," he blurts out anxiously, "I'm so, so sorry, I've bungled this all up-"

"You don't have to be sorry," she says, and her words crack and break as she speaks them, "you don't owe me anything-"

"No, no, please listen to me." He wants to take her hands, which are twisting together on her lap, but he's not sure he should yet. "Whenever I used to think about the end of the war, and - and you, and - and us," he says softly, watching the light change in her eyes, "I never thought it'd be like this. But everything's such a mess right now, and - and _I'm_ such a mess, and I thought you deserved better than that."

Her eyes fix curiously on him. "Better than what?"

"Than all of this." He gestures vaguely in the direction of the house. "You deserve someone who - who's not falling apart trying to keep everything else together-"

"No," she interrupts, and for how quiet her voice is, her intensity is arresting. "I don't only want you when things are good, and easy, I - why do you think I do the washing up with you? And if I wasn't such a miserable cook, I'd help you with that too, I'm just trying to be there for you however I can."

The words wash over him, sinking in one by one. "You… want me?"

She nods. "No matter what."

Her face is tilted up toward him, the setting sun lighting up caramel streaks in her hair. And it's the easiest thing he's done all week, leaning toward her, a hand landing on her thigh as he brings his lips gently to hers. It feels like relief, finally, to stop closing himself off from what - and who - he's always needed.

Hermione pulls away, her cheeks pink. "Were you…" She's a little breathless. "Were you going out flying?"

"Was gonna," says Ron, seeking out her hands with his and watching their fingers interlock. "Don't really need to anymore."

He feels lighter already.

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_Thanks for reading! Please review :)_


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